Musgrave off to a flyer in 2012

Competing in the annual Tour de Ski, a cross-country ski event comprising of nine races over 11 days at five venues in Germany and Italy, Andrew followed up his historic result at the series opener in Oberdorf by taking World Cup points for the second time in his career in the Freestyle Sprint Prologue in Tolbach, Italy.

Yesterday (Jan 4) Andrew again finished in the top 30 of the world's elite skiers, only 6 seconds back from the current Tour leader.  This qualified him for the knock-out heats of the sprint and he found himself skiing head-to-head with Norway's legendary Petter Northug as well as one of Russia's formidable sprint team.  For the first half of the 1.3km race Andrew was skiing in 2nd place, on the tails of a Finnish skier but going into the second lap the Norwegian and Russian pulled ahead along with an Italian skier and Andrew found himself out of the quarter-finals.

The "Tour de Ski" race series is known to push athletes to the limit, testing both their technical abiltity and endurance with no time to recover fully after each race, however it has been well worth the while for Musgrave. The Tour moves on to the 7th stage, a 35km freestyle race from Cortina to Toblach with 312 metres of climbing over a mountain pass, more than 20 of the original 99 starters on day 1 have packed their bags and gone home.  But Andrew shows no sign of running out of energy and is looking to improve his standing.

If you would like to follow Andrew's progress in the final Tour de Ski stages you will find results at: www.fis-ski.com